Cool Skepticism
Have I ever told that I read, I mean like a lot,some friends of mine call me a nerd but that's not important right now .Here's a piece by Charles Swindoll foreworded by Billy Graham.It really is something...
Nine-year-old came bursting out of Sunday school Like a wild stallion.His eyes were darting in every direction as he tried to locate either mom or dad.Finally after a quick search, he grabbed his daddy by the leg and yelled, "Man, that story of Moses and all those people crossing the Red Sea was great!" His father looked down, smiled and asked the boy to tell him about it.
"Well, the isrealites got out of Egypt,but Pharaoh and his army chased after them. So the Jews ran as fast as they could until they got to the Red Sea. The Egyptian Army was gettin' closer and closer.So Moses got on his walkie-talkie and told the Isreali Air Force to bomb the Egyptians. While that was happening, the Isreali Navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross over.They made it!"
By now old dad was showed."Is that the way they taughg you the story?"
"Well, no, not exactly," Danny admitted, "but If I told it to you the way they told it to us, you'd never believe it, Dad"
With childlike innocence the little guy put his finger on the pulse of our sophisticated adult world where cool skepticism reign supreme.It's becoming increasing more popular to operate in the black-and-white world of facts...and, of course, to leave no space for the miraculous.
It's really not a new mentality.Peter mentions it in one of his letters:
...Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleeep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
(2 Peter 3:3-4,KJV).
Skeptics think like that. If they could chose their favorite hymn, it would certainly include the words, "As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be..."
Take gravity. Heavy objects fall toward earth. Always. So a builder can construct a house and never worry about materials floating away.Count on it.Take Chemistry.Mixing certain elements in precise proportions yields the same result.Always. So a doctor can prescibe a medication with predictable confidance.Take astronomy.The sun, the moon, those stars work in perfect harmony.Always.Even the mysterious eclipse comes as a suprise.Take anatomy. Whether it's the pupil of the eye expanding and contracting in response to light or our skin regulating our body temperature or our built-in defense mechanism fighting disease, we operate strictly on the basis of facts.Hard, immutable, stubborn facts.Reliable as the sunset.Real as a toothache.Clear as an X-ray.Absolute, unbending,undeniable. People who conduct their lives according to such thinking are called smart. They haven't a fraction of tolerance for the supernatural.To them it is sloppy to think in terms of the unexplainable,the "miraculous".If insurance companies chose to leave room for "acts of God", that's there business... but those are fightin' words in laboratories and operating rooms and scientific rap sessions and among newspaper editors.
Then what about miracles? Well, let's limit them to a child's world of ficition and fables.And, If necessary, to stained glass sanctuaries Where emotion runs high and imagination is needed to make all those stories interesting.After all, what's little religion without a pocket of miracles? And If we started trying to account for all those things in the Bible, think of the time it will take to explain stuff like How the sun stood still or why all those fish filled the disciples' nets, or what brought lazararus back from beyond, or why Jesus body has never been found or how the death of Christ cleans up lives year after year, or how come the Bible is still around.
Smart, keen-thinking skeptics don't have to explain things like that. It's easier to simply embrace a wholesale denial of the miraculous... which is fine and dandy... until they themselves get sick, face death and need miraculous help crossing that final river.
What happens then? Hey, if I told you what the Bible really says,you'd never believe it.
**Excerpt from Growing Strong In the Seasons of Life.
In conclusion, But as many as received him to them He have the power to become the sons of God even to them that believe on His name.There you have it.I pray you believe this.
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